Then there’s the dimple trick. A jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, for example, has had its contents shrunk, yet the new jar looks as big as the old one unless you turn it on its end. There you’ll find a big indention in the bottom — a hidden way to shrink the capacity of the jar and give you less for your money.

David Segal, who writes “The Haggler” column in The New York Times, recently reported on his Adventures-in-Kraft-Foods-Land. He talked to a PR lady there about the corporation’s unpublicized (but rather dramatic) change in its Baker’s brand of cooking chocolate.

“The change was consumer-driven,” the Kraft Foods spokeswoman craftily replied. “Our consumers have told us that they prefer this [smaller] size.”

Uh, sure, said Segal, but what about that slippery price? She was equally slippery, declaring that the product “is competitively priced.” That wasn’t the question, but her whole game is to avoid giving the honest answer: “We’re gouging our customers.”